


as bright as you in my telescope

by secretsarenotforfree



Series: stupid cupid, stop hitting on me [2]
Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: (ngl i kinda like this one more than the first l o l), F/M, Horny Twenty Somethings, More Lists, Rysposito Are Only In This If you Squint Really Hard, Secret Relationship, TA au, Waffle House, this is basically the FWB Kate & Castle Show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:09:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27805864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretsarenotforfree/pseuds/secretsarenotforfree
Summary: “You love it. Don’t lie, I know you do.”The strawberry waffles are damn inspired. The cook has the magic touch with powdered sugar and her over easy eggs are just how she likes them even though she hadn’t gotten the chance to specify. He tastes like strawberries and she’s used to cigarettes and she hates how much she does, in fact, love it. This might be Kate’s new favorite place to stop for food close to campus, but that doesn’t mean anything. He doesn’t get the win.
Relationships: Kate Beckett/Richard Castle
Series: stupid cupid, stop hitting on me [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2034472
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	as bright as you in my telescope

**Author's Note:**

> I TOLD YOU I HAD MORE STORED! tentatively, there will be a part three. i already have a plan, vaguely, sort of.
> 
> the first fic was rated T but this one is VERY MUCH RATED M! i actually like the writing i did here a lot.
> 
> title from 'can't help' by parachute, very much a vibe here. highly recommend.

Inevitably, Kate’s had to come to a realization.

Took some time to make some sort of peace with it, but she finally had. 

She was no longer allowed to call it a trial run. Trial runs did not last for _days_ or _weeks_ or just over a month. They just didn’t. And maybe this was all a mistake, even if was the best one she’d ever made, because Kate couldn’t find the want in herself to make it all _stop_ . This was out of hand. They were out of hand. It seemed any equation involving Castle ended up getting, _out of hand_.

Because it had been some time now. It had been some time now, and early on Kate had been adding to the list of Things She Knew. She had been adding to that list, and then it got too long, and she mentally scrapped it and started working on another, called Secrets She Knew. And this list, this second one, it was radioactive. It was far, far more dangerous than the first one, because it wasn’t being written in her head anymore. It was written on _her_ , on her skin, twirled in the phantoms that his touch left behind. And that kind of ink was permanent. Far more than the tiny phrase scripted black just beneath her breasts. And Kate didn't know what to do about it.

_One day at a time._

Each new wind of 24 hours to add more bits of information that left her still near greedy for more. Left her wondering how exactly she was going to easily recover from this when it ended (because it _had_ to, everything always did, she knew that even if personal experience had hammered that into her brain). Or maybe _easily_ wasn't the right word for it, because easy had flown out the window ages ago. Easy had packed up its shit and left her for dead when she had still been fantasizing about whether his writing meant he was good with hands too. She was all alone in this deep, dark, wonderful rabbit hole, all things that were easily forgotten when it was him keeping her company instead. Silencing those insecure, clamoring thoughts that were frankly terrified of getting, heaven forbid, _attached_ to someone who officially held no strings to her. Not a one. 

Everything being fair, maybe that should've been the first thing on the New List. An unexpected bonus in this man that Kate was learning was far from perfect, but close enough to it to have her knees go weak. To have it be impossible to stop her lips from turning into a ( _gasp_ ) happy smile when he was around. With all rights, it should've been the first, but Kate was twenty (almost twenty one). Kate's heart was being led body first, head second, and so it wasn't nearly something as pure as all that. And so it wasn't.

  
  


Secrets Kate Now Knew (the Sequel List)

_one of the rare that was better than the first_

  1. His breathing got heavier when he kissed. It drew from deep in his lungs, ragged after a makeout session, wrecked after he came. It quickened, when he got close, with those pretty, _pretty_ lashes pressed tight, and slowed in the afterward. Ended in drawled out words caught in the space between Kate's naked shoulder blades, dissipated against her secret places. Each new sound torn from those lungs burrowed itself into Kate's, the wordless lyrics to a song she couldn't quite place but started to search for whenever it wasn't there.
  2. And kissing. _Speaking_ of kissing. Kate's suspicions had been proven right because he was so good at it. _Too_ good at it. He was slightly stubbled cheeks under palms, determined and headstrong and gentle. Gentle sometimes, enough to make her ache for something she'd never had, and sometimes, also, the best kind of mean that had Kate thinking she'd put the whole emphasis on _bad_ in this boy. Castle had a habit of treating your mouth like had just arrived at a tasting session and his sole mission was to ensure that he captured every flavor. Investigated, and in the process _owned_ , with every confident lick of his tongue, her lips until Kate didn't know what was left or who was right. When he really got going he could have her melting in minutes, finding herself pouring into his lap when she could've sworn she'd been making Political Journalism notes just ten minutes before. Abandoning plans of an essay that really could be done tomorrow when he absolutely indulged himself on visiting every last sensitive spot on her neck, all mischief and skill, landing Kate rather frequently in places where no matter how sinful it felt when he sucked into the curve of her neck, if she didn't stop him soon, she'd be wearing turtlenecks to all her classes.



(Do not get her _started_ on what that kissing does to her between her legs when he’s licking and sucking and so determined that she when she comes she _screams_ because Kate could go on about it all day. She could, but she won’t, because his ego doesn’t need more feeding. It _doesn’t_.)

She wasn't an expert, on the kissing, but Kate had certainly become a scholar because Castle kissed her _everywhere_ . In places he should and places he shouldn't. That first night, when they were still attempting to catch their breath and it was quiet in her room sans the neutral roll of small lights across her speaker. Kate hadn’t had time to have her worries dump her head first in whatever came _next_ \- it had been theory, and now it was reality, and she was naked. She was naked, tangled in sheets next to Richard Castle himself, and not to be cliche but Kate had no other descriptive term for it, he had _rocked_ her damn world. That wasn’t to say that it hadn’t been sprinkled with the small mistakes that litter every first time with a partner, usually caused by dizzying eagerness and fumbles from a lack of familiarity. When you weren’t sure what parts of what worked for you would almost be up your partners alley.

They had eased into a sort of agreement, noting and responding to the other person’s touches and how they were received. The arch of Kate’s back into his palm, the slight scrape of his teeth against her neck. The way they couldn’t seem to agree with who would be on top, turning and twisting through teases that culminate in Castle finally pushing her legs back into the bed with wide, hot hands, the stretch so good that Kate couldn’t help but moan. Knew that the taper of dark red was damp at the nape of her neck and her thighs were still shaking from the appetizer he’d gone after before the main event. He had barely stopped kissing her, it seems, through it all, both seeming to loath more than a couple of snatches of spaces of air between their mouth unless it resulted in less clothing on them both. Castle kissed her hard, like he was searching for something and you were powerless but to be swept on the journey. He kisses her after they’re done, kissed her stumbling into his clothing, kisses her before pulling away from her place and he sends a kissy face in the text he sends her once he’s home. 

(It was following a smirk emoji, to be fair, and an eggplant because his humor has not stopped being just the right side of cheeky and crude as Kate had discovered when he was buried deep inside her, but c’mon. Let her live in the moment.)

She forces herself not to think about when it will happen again. _If_ it would happen again, the next day. It’s the weekend, and she shouldn’t see him until the next Tuesday. A whole four days to agonize and regret letting her ovaries lead her actions instead of the brain that thousands of dollars were being dedicated to the honing of. Some investment that was. Kate rolls over in bed the next morning and just blinks at the deep purple ceiling. Wonders at the fact that her sheets are freshly washed due to necessity the night before, and if that had really happened. Moves her legs around a little in bed, mostly bare from the random t-shirt and sleep shorts staple of her sleep wear, and blushes at their soreness. Blushes, and then drags her hands down her face and curses herself out for cheeks that burned.

Kate manages to not think about it when she holds down the button to turn her phone back on after a night of charging. She forcibly continues to not think when she purposefully leaves it on her nightstand and goes to the bathroom to wash her face. Absolutely does not spend a second dwelling on the mounting disappointment she would feel if she would get notifications of everything but the one she so ridiculously wanted when she scrubs at her teeth nearly angrily. Takes her time smoothing lotion on her still damp face and acts like the steps to go make that LED screen light up didn’t feel like a rollercoaster on her carpeted floor. 

Of course, it was all for nought.

Of course, Kate had done something right, somewhere, and she’d been near giving herself an ulcer for nothing, because she had a snap from him. A selfie, at a slightly ridiculous angle, of Castle brandishing a plastic butter knife at a clock that clearly used to be on the wall of a classroom. An animation swung the words **en garde** in neon shining 180 in the corner, with a caption reading _Richard Castle, Certifiably Ready and Available to Kill Time With You_ and the year in parentheses. It’s ridiculous. Her stomach is forbidden to jump, she will deny the heat spreading across her chest, and the little thing she pressed her finger to is definitely a frown and certainly not a smile.

Sudden confidence, a new close friend of Kate’s that really should be spreading her reach into areas _other_ than Kate’s love life, surges again and she doesn’t even send a picture. 

_Did you get someone to take the picture?_

And then, quickly, right below it.

_I can’t believe you just referred to yourself in third person. You’re not Chris Keller._

Three heartbeats, four, and Kate resolves to close the message. To stop waiting for him to see the messages as fast as humanly possible. Her thumb hovers, but before she can do it, the little head pops up. Animated, but with his signature hair and blue eyes that Kate thinks pales in comparison to the real thing by far. She herself has been too lazy to set up her own, though, so she guesses she can’t really judge.

_Commitment to the arts can only be seen as a virtue, and you know I’m right._

_A One Tree Hill reference? I knew I liked you._

_And is that a yes, or a no?_

Kate’s head dipped forward, messy dark bangs in her eyes as her hipbones press into the sink under the fabric of her loose shorts. Her shoulders shift as she types a message back, the neckline sliding over a deceptively pretty purpling mark on her collarbone from his mouth.

_Hmmm. Maybe I can fit you in._

_I can certainly be persuaded to._

The temperature had dropped ten, twenty degrees in general since then. Autumn in New York was a beautiful and miserable thing, but it’s thaw had nothing on Kate. Nothing on them. And had not an idea what to do with all of this when Castle was kissing her. He is kissing her _everywhere_ these days and _often_ and Kate was high on the rush on all of it. She happily added kinds of kisses in a subset of the list, a’s, b’s, and c’s of things she didn’t want to forget.

2a. He kisses her in the library basement, not twenty minutes after the library had mostly emptied out by students going to mid morning classes. The cold lines of the metal shelves shivered out of focus with the press of worn spines and Castle’s body into hers. His tall strong heat keeping her body off the ground, legs wrapped round him, his fingers slipping up the back of her loose maroon sweater. He bites her lip, hard, and then has to muffle a too loud moan with his lips right afterwards.

(“You’re gonna get us caught, Beckett.” He had adopted her last name right back, though it seemed interchangeable with her first. Unless he was inside her - then it was only _Kate, oh fuck, KATE_ and new meanings got added on to her name. 

“Then shut me up.” She offers up on a sharp tongue, dark eyes in the poorly lit back area, and it’s the first time Kate hears something like a growl rip through his ribs and end up in her own mouth.)

2b. He kisses her at a 24/7 Waffle House where every single person that works there seems to know him by name. Castle orders for her through her protests and conspiratorially, loudly, tells the waitress that she’s a Waffle House virgin and it was her solemn duty to rectify that situation. She yanks the hat so hard on his head in retaliation to her own crooked one that the thin paper rips and it ends up below his ears. 

Her arms are warm in the black and white flannel that Castle _had_ been wearing before she’d ripped it off of him at three am (a mere hour or so earlier event directly caused by her need to submit a project before it’s morning deadline) and then accidentally forgot her own jacket in the car so that he would offer it his shirt instead, and it’s late. Late, and their hunger is driven by some pretty pleasedly exhausting exercise, and when he catches her laugh in her mouth he tastes like the syrup he’d snuck a couple of drops of while they waited for their food. Because he had absolutely no patience. He had no patience, yes, but the syrup is almost as sweet as him and Kate forgets to care about her ridiculous yellow hat or her growling stomach when the tip of his finger is caught right before the curve of her chin and she’s ready to drop everything to follow where it and those lips of his lead. 

He kisses her, and then he throws his arm across the back of his size of the booth and continues to advocate for chocolate milkshakes superiority to all over flavors like Kate wasn’t still trying to recover from the bold lick he’d left the kiss on in the public space. As if his knee wasn’t still pressed tight against hers like it had been at the coffee shop that first time.

(“You love it. Don’t lie, I know you do.”

The strawberry waffles are damn inspired. The cook has the magic touch with powdered sugar and her over easy eggs are just how she likes them even though she hadn’t gotten the chance to specify. He tastes like strawberries and she’s used to cigarettes and she hates how much she does, in fact, love it. This might be Kate’s new favorite place to stop for food close to campus, but that doesn’t mean anything. He doesn’t get the win. 

She shrugs, pops another bite in her mouth. “It could be worse.”

He sighs, much agonized, and tries to use it as a cover from him stealing a piece of her bacon. Kate swiftly moves her plate out of the way and play bites in the air in the direction of his hand. “Why are you so hard to please?” Castle complains, darker than maybe a moment before at the thought of the last time Kate bit him, for near for real that time to keep from her roommates hearing at an hour so god early Esposito was only awake because of ROTC. “Except, for that time that I crooked my fingers in -”

Kate shushes him audibly and tells him to stop gloating and eat his damn food before she ate it for him.)

2c. He kisses her like he has all the time in the world, even when they clearly do not. Even when this thing is barely a month old Kate gravitates to his lap easier than she should be. She’d led him to her favorite place on campus, her own, she liked to think, secret stake of land on the grounds. A bench, old and neglected, half sunken at all times crooked to a row of trees that ringed the fall away to a stream that most students didn’t know existed. Secluded, silent but for the quiet noise of the water, and perfectly hidden to go for a smoke, as Kate often had when she deemed herself earning of a stress free night. Meant for things supposed to be kept out of sight. Her left knee fell past the bench a bit, lopsided support to his grip on her ass while they makeout, generally filthy and terribly right under the stars.

The slightly sweet taste of strain she currently had still lingered on the back of his tongue but Kate had no problem seeking it out on her own. Castle’s hand pressed insistent and blazing on her waist, thumb branding close to her center, and Kate squirms in his lap. Tilts her head back for a second into the hold he had on the back of her neck, it’s shape adjusting from commanding to supportive at the break. Heavy, damp air threatened to fog in front of her while her fingers curl in his blue and black scarf, thin and only generally warming against her fingertips. 

Her head loosens and floats away like a helium of desire and awareness while Castle’s lips and teeth work along her neck, and soaks in the words he’s whispering behind her ear things about what he would like to do to her in a perfect world. Lay her on this bench, or a blanket or something, anything to have the sky at his back and her hazel eyes tethering him to the ground. His words had more than proved to be just as potent, just as panty incinerating as they had been on the page, and she’s needy for him. Frustrated that this location which had seemed so perfect just a bit ago was now doing nothing to relieve the coiled _want_ that had her hips rolling into his own need, at the lack of relief for them both. Her eyes flutter closed, tongue flicking out to wet her lips, and she spends just a moment or two of time remembering how their lips had shared kisses even earlier when they shared their joint, lips wrapping where the others had been. 

When Castle’s hands both come up, devoted to cupping her face and directing her mouth back to his with his thumbs, Kate comes willingly. Lingers on every draw of their lips against each other, sips at him like he’s a mixed drink at a party you don’t know all the ingredients of, but don’t care because you’re a little drunk (on this, on _him_ ) and it tastes pretty damn good.

(“I cannot _believe_ you got me high, had me _this_ close to fucking you on a mossy bench in what I’m half positive was Swamp Thing territory, and then forced me in my compromised state to carry you back to your place.”

Kate licks at the back of his neck and actually giggles when Castle reacts immediately with a swear and an attempt to get the material of his scarf to wipe it off. “Talk less. Walk faster. It’s cold outside. And don’t act like actually meeting Dr. Alec Holland, vines or no, wouldn’t have just made your entire night even more than me.”

He grumbles a little bit before falling silent and all that Kate hears is the almost crunch of his boots against near frosted grass and forest mulch. She felt loose, hazy, happy, and it was nice. It was _really_ nice and Kate was not interested in doing anything but enjoy it. Pair it with the slight weightlessness of his strong grip on her legs, keeping her piggybacked position secure, Kate hugs him a little once and then burrows her face in the back of his neck.

When they make it back to her place, Castle gives her the slowest, fizzy rolling kiss at her front door that Kate had ever had. She traced her lips afterwards, half asleep as she drags up the set of stairs, and is out of it enough to try and actually press the memory of it onto her lips.)

So yeah. 

Castle kissing her was basically the top of the list.

3\. He touches things. Castle was _physically fucking incapable_ of keeping his hands to himself and it was the biggest pain of Kate’s life and also the biggest unexpected treat. He twirls his fingers into the ties of her thin robe at home, impeding the journey of breakfast to a plate to bring her to him instead. He dips inquisitive fingertips onto every curve of her body, tracing the lines of her tattoo and the thin, spiderwebbed stretch marks on the sides of her breast. He draws his fingers through the layers of her bob from root to her neck and makes her shiver every damn time. The shape of his hands is burned into every waiting coffee cup by her lecture seat in class, in the empty space she felt after they had just left her core, in the trail they left down her back before he had to leave, a constant thing Kate found herself painfully waiting for whenever they made it to a bed. He touches her with his words, even when he isn’t there, with sweet and obscene text messages that have her biting her lip when she’s in line to get dinner, or just walking from class. Castle sends her digitized dreams soaked in sex about how good her spine looks arched out in front of him, how he loves to see her work his cock with her eyes darting occasionally to his over her shoulder. Every letter slips over her skin to ignite sparks of fire, darting from the space at the center of her ribcage that he favorited as a place to so frequently kiss at and suck, to the ass he took every opportunity to grab handfuls of, pooling so low in her stomach that it filled every bit of her.

(The English Language was a weapon, in that man’s hands. More dangerous than an atomic bomb, more lasting than the shrapnel so many other forces of destruction left behind. Tiny, flint pieces of him were buried so deep Kate was terrified that they wouldn’t come out, and she technically couldn’t even call him her _boyfriend_ yet.)

_Of course,_ it wouldn’t be the kissing that got them in trouble. That tore the roof off of their ostensibly flimsy hide out of a friends with benefits fling that had turned into something neither of them had made a move to define yet. That pushed them into the light. 

It had a little something to do with the fact that Castle’s place, while nice (Kate would never get over those arching windows, the newfound knowledge of what exactly a book advance could do for some real estate when the first one was doing phenomenally well for a first time author), seemed to have his mother in it more often that not, and she was a greater hazard than anyone Kate could have at her place. She still snuck him around Ryan and Esposito, dodging questions about her suddenly busy free time and why the door to her room was closed more often than not nowadays, and tries to ignore that little flicker at the back of those blue blue blues. The flicker that had only begun to appear now, when they month trial run, if they both used their words to admit, was over and Kate had no intention to cancel her subscription. No intention to stop this little thing they had going. That flicker that made it impossible to disguise the moment of hesitation before he left from her door, before she gathered her stuff to go. 

The flicker that Kate knew was mirrored in her own eyes, that maybe they both wanted more.

That something was keeping them from getting it.

All these reasons, for one cause or another, wound them up at Kate’s place more often than not. And dropped them in this early evening, when Ryan was supposed to be at club baseball practice, and Esposito had made very loud plans to go ‘trolling for the honeys’, albeit way out of Lanie’s earshot. 

She didn’t know when they stopped jumping each others bones immediately when he parked his too nice Tesla on her too dirty street and bounded up the front stoop like he knew he would be let him, and if he didn’t he knew exactly where the extra key was. (Which, for the record, he did.) Kate’s in the serviceable kitchen, a pot of water begun to boil on the stove. Papers she’d spent a painful twenty minutes printing at the library earlier were marked in black and purple, articles for the paper due at the end of term for her Consequence & Morality course. So in the zone was she, and confident of who might be stumbling in, that she didn’t look up from her laptop when the unmistakable noises of it opening and shutting rang out. Didn’t move, despise a joyous, betrayed rush of blood to her cheeks at the very noise of his frustratingly perfectly tuned humming to a song she recognized as the one they’d sang unabashedly to at the top of their lungs the last time they went for midnight coffee.

(Don’t judge them. _Panic! At the Disco_ would always be a jam.)

She can’t help the smile when he flicks that one too long bang out of her face and makes for her mouth, bending every impressive inch of him over to be level with her. 

“You look like you’re working too hard.” Castle observes, piling himself down to the wooden chair beside her, still with his scarf unspooled and his black coat hanging open. He’s got a blue thermal on today - _not fair_ \- and he wastes no time hooking a foot around the leg of her own and dragging it towards him.

“Castle, I’m _trying_ to at least finish this page.” Her tone says that she means it, but how quickly she pulled her hands back from the keys in anticipation for the pulling tells another story. “Can’t you make yourself useful and get the pasta going instead?” Once upon a time, the sweater Kate has on used to be her mothers. Purple dark, knit loosened enough with time that it sagged at bit at her shoulders and wrists. Enough worn spaces between the twisted lines at it was easy for Castle to slip a finger through to stroke limitedly at the bumps of her spine. Attempt to convince her closer before Kate chuckles and little bites off the kiss, sinking her teeth just enough to know she means it into the perfect cupid bow lower lip before pulling away, hands balling on her knees.

“Ow,” He complains lazily through an eye crinkle and pupil darkening that say exactly how much of him isn’t wounded. “I came over to be used for sex, not housework.”

“Too bad. You’re my French maid today, so get to it.” Kate throws the dishtowel. abandoned next to the coffee cup he has perched on one of the the spread pages, right at his face and scoots back determinedly to her open document. “I’ll stop when you’re done.”

“Promise?” Castle’s wheedling, and he doesn’t even attempt to hide it, even while he is shedding his clothes on the back of the chair. Rolling up his sleeves and beelining for the cabinet that they kept the pasta in. 

“Always. Whatever it takes for you to cook dinner so I don’t have to.”

Remarkably, he makes it about ten minutes before those touching needs of his kick in full force. Eleven that he takes to give one last vigorous stir and start talking nonsensically about the pretty blonde barista who’d asked him just who exactly he purchased the latte for every day if it wasn’t him, deceptively casually like Castle didn’t know it would get Kate’s attention immediately riveted to his strong shoulders. Twelve that he pretends that the banked heat in her hazel eyes wasn’t working all the way up to burning the more he waxed on about it.

Kate doesn’t know when she saved the file and closed her laptop, shuffling the papers into a little pile and barely withholding the wince she got from seeing the perfect brown ring one of them, left by his cup. “And, what exactly did you tell her? Feel free to forget that you’re in _my_ kitchen and I am within rights to wield any of _my_ knives.”

Castle’s leaning against the counter next to the stove now, deceptively easygoing. A roll going through his body stupid close to a shrug that will get Kate’s jealousy demon out full force. As much as they refused to put any sort of label on this thing, Jealousy had always been approved. Another flame to add to the inferno they managed to easily ignite in one another. “A bit of this and that. Hedged around it. Why? What’s it to you?” It’s not the first little conversation like this they’ve had, of others asking them out. Of getting attention. 

(They always ended in an abundance of lost clothes and not nearly enough words. Kate doubted today would be any different, as long as she kept playing around the subject and Castle kept letting her.)

“I’m thinking you should’ve told her not hitting on the customers would guarantee her a bigger tip.”

“From who?” 

Kate turns her back to him on purpose, leaning down to do a very unnecessary tidying of the table. Knowing that her ass drove him absolutely wild and if there was one thing Castle hated more than being raging hard when she was miles away, it was looking and not being able to touch. 

“I always leave a big tip.” 

She’s straightened, but the sound of his words is a lot closer than anticipated, just like the tug to the back pocket of her jeans. Kate tamps down a squeak just barely when Castle gets her twirled into his arms, lifts her up for no good reason other than the fact that he’s strong enough to throw her around if she wanted him to and it took her from 0 to 100 faster than anything else. Well, almost anything. There is that _mouth_ of his. Castle settles her between his legs, fingers twined in her empty belt loops and thumbs stroking the bared skin from the sweater, and Kate loses no time draping her arms around his neck. “Hmmm. Big tip?”

“Large. Incredible Hulk worthy, you could say.” He adds, the slight adjustment of his own hips reminding her Just How Big He Was, not that Kate could ever forget. 

“Huh. If you say so. I meant more of a tip, from _me._ Because if she keeps that up, I’m not giving her a red cent.”

She’s inches from his mouth now, body flowing into him like water. The pasta could probably use another stir, but neither of them care much at the moment. Castle certainly doesn’t, with those blues fastened to her lips, and a rough note entering his voice. “If I say so? I would say it sounds like you need a reminder.”

“Maybe I do,” Kate murmurs, and leans in to add a 2z before a noise registers. A dropped _something_ , loud and purposeful. She and Castle turn in unison before realizing it and -

_Oh._

_O. h._

Ryan and Esposito, in the doorway of the kitchen they both shared, with the most extremely different expressions on their face. Ryan, blonde hair still a little soaked from the presumed rain outside that Kate just now notices, the umbrella dropped on the floor the culprit for the noise. Looking like someone just slapped him across the face with a fish and he’s trying to figure out if it stinks or not. Espo, the ruddiness in his face indicating that drinking had, in fact, gone done since Kate had last seen him. Trying desperately to hold in a laugh and doing terribly.

“Kev…” Esposito manages through cheeks that looked like they hurt from the effort of not displaying a shit eating grin. “You owe me $59.99. Plus tax.”

**Author's Note:**

> i know waffle houses only exist in the south, and this takes place in new york.
> 
> i also don't care.
> 
> hope y'all hate me for the ending ;). xoxo gossip girl skjgsjg


End file.
